Paths of Judgement Part 25

Felicia, knowing what his resignation of office meant to him, was too much distressed by what she felt beneath the lightness to respond in the playful key.

"You are not a ruined man," she said; "I'm not pleased that you should call yourself that. You really can't afford to re-enter the House as an independent member?"

"No," said Geoffrey, shortly; "I can afford nothing but drudgery."

"Drudging with you will only be a stepping-stone back to power."

He was studying her as he stood before her, seeing suddenly after his momentary self-absorption, her pallor and thinness. She almost reminded him of the ghostly Felicia, the Felicia of tears and helpless grief; the Felicia of that distant day among the birch-woods. This Felicia was not helpless, not weeping, not quite so wan, but her looks made an ominous echo. He took a seat beside her. "Your father still goes constantly to Angela?" he asked.

Felicia nodded gravely, yet without plaintiveness. Geoffrey made no comment on the affirmation. In silence for some moments, he told himself that this daily growing alienation accounted for the air of pain and tension.

"I must actually seem to you to whine over myself," he said, presently.

"Of course, I know that the drudgery is only a stepping-stone. I must fill my pockets with ammunition; find the pebble for my sling before I confront Goliath again. But tell me something.... I may ask it?" He hesitated. Under his light firmness he knew a shattered, groping mood.

He could not think with clearness either for her or himself, and only felt that he must ask.

"Anything you like," Felicia answered gravely.

"Are you happy?"

He had never come so near as in asking the question; they both felt it.

Some barrier was gone; the barrier of her happiness, perhaps. Felicia knew that the little moment suddenly trembled for her with that sense of nearness; in another she felt that her sadness would be a stronger barrier.

She looked up from her sewing.

"You know what I feel about papa and Lady Angela. I feel it foolishly perhaps."

"Apart from that, it's a pain, I know, but one can adjust oneself to pain."

"Apart from that, am I happy? What do you mean by happiness?"

"Are you satisfied? Is your life growing? Is it glad?" Each question was a stone thrown into a deep, deep well of sadness, but she answered with serenity over these shaken depths, even smiling at him with a flicker of the old malice. "It would not grow if I were satisfied, nor, perhaps, if I were altogether glad."

She saw by the look of accepted gloom that came to his face that he knew himself banished from that moment of nearness, and over the barrier felt herself putting out a hand of tender compunction and comradeship, as she went on more gravely, "I think I am happy, but happiness is not a thing one can look at. It's like a bird singing in a tree--one parts the branches to see it and it is silent."

"You hear it singing, then, when I don't ask you questions?" He had grasped the metaphorical hand, understanding and grateful; understanding, at all events, as much as she herself did.

"Yes; and when I don't stop to listen for it."

They talked on again: of his situation, his projects, but these things were now far from their minds. The fact of his broken life no longer held Geoffrey's thoughts; they were in a chaos of doubts and surmises.

He had ruined himself, then, that she might hear the bird sing, and it was silent; and was it only silent? Had it flown? For the first time since he had played the part of a happy fate in her life he knew a pa.s.sionate regret for what he had done. No doubt, no surmise, touched her love for her husband. The regret was for the chance he had lost--that other chance of making her happy. Why hadn't he ruthlessly held on to the advantage circ.u.mstance gave him, the advantage not only over Maurice's poverty, but over Maurice's weakness? A lurid thought went over that weakness. Would he, Geoffrey, whatever his poverty, have given her up? The "no" that thrilled sternly through his blood told him that to his strength the triumph might have come. He only quelled the tumult by remembering her strength. Dubious peace--to think that her strength would never have let him hope; her strength was great, no doubt, but was it as great as he had imagined? And would it have held her faithful to a finally fickle Maurice? Above all, would it have outmatched his own through years? The tumult was rising again, and he saw that the sudden, wild regret had been like the opening of a flood-gate to such tumults. He must endure them with as much composure as he could muster from contemplation of the fact that the past was irrevocable, that he had given her to her husband, and that she loved her husband; the last fact in particular laid a chill, sane hand on retrospect.

He and Felicia were still talking when Mr. Merrick entered.

Far from a.s.suming a culprit's humility, Mr. Merrick's demeanour of late showed, towards Maurice and Felicia, an aggressive indifference, and towards Geoffrey a portentous gravity. He had made a habit of coming in upon _tete-a-tetes_, taking up a book, and seating himself, with a frosty nod and air of remonstrant determination that was more than a hint for Geoffrey's departure.

Geoffrey had ignored the hint on several recent occasions, continuing to talk until Maurice's appearance seemed to relieve Mr. Merrick from some sense of grim obligation; he would then arise, with no word, and stalk away. Geoffrey felt amus.e.m.e.nt in watching these manoeuvres, giving very little thought to their significance, and finding a schoolboy fun in the conviction that he annoyed Mr. Merrick very much by outsitting him. But to-day he was in no mood for annoying Mr. Merrick; Mr. Merrick's appearance, indeed, annoyed him too vividly for him to feel the fun of retaliation. He got up at once, and before the other had taken his place near the window.

"Good-bye," he said, taking Felicia's hand; his eyes lingered on her pallor, her wanness. "I won't silence the bird any more. I'll see you soon again. Tell Maurice I'm sorry to miss him."

He departed, and Mr. Merrick, arrested in his usual routine, paused, book in hand, on his way to his chair.

His frustrated pa.s.sive energy took form in speech. He sat down and opened the book, observing, "I am sorry, Felicia, to be obliged to send any of your guests away."

Felicia had noticed and wondered at the interruptions, hardly suspecting them of purpose, but now all manner of latent irritations leaped up in her. To-day, especially, she had resented her father's appearance. She had needed Geoffrey, the haven of his silence and his strength. After that one strange moment of inner trembling, the old sense of quiet skies and an encircling sh.o.r.e had returned, and she had rested in it.

Now, looking up, her face sharpened with quick suspicion and quick resentment, she asked, "Obliged? Send my guests away? Indeed, papa, you could not do that."

Her voice rather alarmed Mr. Merrick; it revealed a more resolute hostility than he had suspected; and real hostility, final or open hostility between him and his child, Mr. Merrick, in his heart of hearts, feared more than any calamity. Flattered vanity, injured trust, real anxiety for her welfare, had all helped to float his new independence, but he never contemplated really sailing away from her. He nerved himself now with the thought of his duty. Swinging his foot, speaking with measured definiteness, his eyes on his book, he said, "I shall at all events do my utmost to protect you from an undesirable intimacy."

Felicia's quick heart guessed at the alarm that nerved itself, and now, after the moment in which her anger rose, her sense of the ludicrous shook the anger to sudden laughter.

"Papa! how ridiculous!" she exclaimed. "Really, your prejudices shouldn't make you say and do such foolish and such futile things. Mr.

Daunt is my dearest friend--Maurice's dearest friend."

"It is a friendship I regret for both of you. Maurice is weak, Mr. Daunt is strong; he dominates you both."

"What folly, my dear father!"

"Very well, Felicia, folly be it. I can only say that your conduct in this, as in other respects, deeply distresses me. You are altogether changed."

"I changed? In what respect?"

Mr. Merrick paused to review swiftly all the respects, before saying, "You have become cynical, ungenerous, disloyal."

Felicia's amus.e.m.e.nt hardened to stern gravity. She grew even paler, laying down her sewing as she said, "Ungenerous? Disloyal? I?"

"You, Felicia. It has given me the very greatest pain."

"How have I been ungenerous? disloyal?"

Her father did not meet her eyes.

"You have been ungenerous to a very n.o.ble woman, who only asked to be your friend. You have been disloyal to me."

"To you!" Her interjections were like swift knives, cutting at his careful deliberateness. "What do you mean?"

"You thought fit, moved by this influence that I deplore--quite apart from its open antagonism to my claims on you--to scoff and jeer at my essay. It would have been enough to have expressed your dislike to me alone." His eyes now turned to her.

She gazed at him with an almost stupid astonishment. Suddenly she rose.

As if some hateful revelation had torn stupefaction from her,--"That horrible woman!" she cried.

"It was your husband who told me," said Mr. Merrick quickly.

"Maurice told you that I had scoffed at your essay with that woman?"

Her eyes now had a corpse-like vacancy, very unpleasant to meet; only his consciousness of integrity enabled Mr. Merrick to keep his own steady.

"Scoff is perhaps too strong a word. You allowed her to see to the full your dislike, your scorn, and then repulsed her sympathy. That is what Maurice gave me to understand, and that, I don't fancy you can deny, is the truth."